“Say, did you have some fool idee I was a-goin’ to kill you?” he queried, gruffly.

“I’m afraid—­I did,” faltered Carley.  Her relief was a release; it was so strange that it was gratefulness.

“Wal, I reckon I wouldn’t have hurt you.  None of these flop-over Janes for me! . . .  An’ I’ll give you a hunch, Pretty Eyes.  You might have run acrost a fellar thet was no gentleman!”

Of all the amazing statements that had ever been made to Carley, this one seemed the most remarkable.

“What’d you wear thet onnatural white dress fer?” he demanded, as if he had a right to be her judge.

“Unnatural?” echoed Carley.

“Shore.  Thet’s what I said.  Any woman’s dress without top or bottom is onnatural.  It’s not right.  Why, you looked like—­like”—­here he floundered for adequate expression—­“like one of the devil’s angels.  An’ I want to hear why you wore it.”

“For the same reason I’d wear any dress,” she felt forced to reply.

“Pretty Eyes, thet’s a lie.  An’ you know it’s a lie.  You wore thet white dress to knock the daylights out of men.  Only you ain’t honest enough to say so . . . .  Even me or my kind!  Even us, who’re dirt under your little feet.  But all the same we’re men, an’ mebbe better men than you think.  If you had to put that dress on, why didn’t you stay in your room?  Naw, you had to come down an’ strut around an’ show off your beauty.  An’ I ask you—­ if you’re a nice girl like Flo Hutter—­what’d you wear it fer?”

Carley not only was mute; she felt rise and burn in her a singular shame and surprise.

“I’m only a sheep dipper,” went on Ruff, “but I ain’t no fool.  A fellar doesn’t have to live East an’ wear swell clothes to have sense.  Mebbe you’ll learn thet the West is bigger’n you think.  A man’s a man East or West.  But if your Eastern men stand for such dresses as thet white one they’d do well to come out West awhile, like your lover, Glenn Kilbourne.  I’ve been rustlin’ round here ten years, an’ I never before seen a dress like yours—­an’ I never heerd of a girl bein’ insulted, either.  Mebbe you think I insulted you.  Wal, I didn’t.  Fer I reckon nothin’ could insult you in thet dress. . . .  An’ my last hunch is this, Pretty Eyes.  You’re not what a hombre like me calls either square or game.  Adios.”

His bulky figure darkened the doorway, passed out, and the light of the sky streamed into the cabin again.  Carley sat staring.  She heard Ruff’s spurs tinkle, then the ring of steel on stirrup, a sodden leathery sound as he mounted, and after that a rapid pound of hoofs, quickly dying away.